Food giant cuts waste

Macca’s plans to take a knife to plastics with cutlery move

MCDONALD’S will use today’s first national plastics summit to announce a move to wooden cutlery.

Food producer Nestle will also reveal plans to collect biscuit packets and bread bags from more than 100,000 households.

Macca’s pledge will stop 585 tonnes of plastic going into landfill each year.

Nestle’s trial will collect 750 tonnes of so-called “soft plastic”. That could be recycled to help build new roads or playground equipment, as already happens with shopping bags returned to Woolworths and Coles.

“We know that soft plastics is an area that needs greater focus and collaboration,” said Nestle Australia CEO Sandra Martinez.

“We need to find ways to drive more recycling here.” Soft plastics make up 20 per cent of what goes in to household bins.

Some of that ends up in the recycling, which it shouldn’t, said Sydney-based iQ Renew CEO Danial Gallagher, who is developing the trial for Nestle.

“Most material recovery facilities can’t separate soft plastic from other items in household recycling, so while soft plastic can be recycled, what we lack is a robust, scalable system to collect and process it using existing kerbside collection,” Mr Gallagher said.

Getting Australia to better manage its use of plastic is a personal passion for Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

China’s decision to ban imports of recyclables from Australia has only increased the need for action.

Australia had been sending about 187,000 tonnes of plastic waste to China annually.

Last year, the federal and state governments agreed to stop sending waste offshore by June 2022.

Today’s summit will look at how to: reduce the volume of plastic being produced; increase the amount that is recycled; and find new ways to reuse what is collected.